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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Burgess, post: 5175152, member: 105098&quot;]Interesting discussion. </p><p><br /></p><p>around 1860 a farm worker/laborer would make around $5 a week, while a professional like blacksmith, machinist or carpenter might of made $10-$11 a week.</p><p>they still had expenses, room and board for instance, things to pay out of that wage, trying to build a house, needing a horse maybe, ect. </p><p><br /></p><p>Gold and paper money even was used by banks mostly, people used it but it wasn&#039;t a workhorse, the double eagle was more like a $100 bill, but actually more like a $500 bill. you&#039;d of had a hard time to get change for it around town without a bank involved.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>as far as food, let say</p><ul> <li>Rice: 6 cents a pound</li> <li>Beans: 6 cents for a dry quart</li> <li>Sugar: 8 cents a pound</li> <li>Beef: 9 cents a pound</li> <li>Cheese: 10 cents a pound</li> <li>Bacon: 12 cents a pound</li> <li>Butter: 16 cents a pound</li> <li>Eggs: 20 cents a dozen</li> <li>Potatoes: 40 cents a bushel</li> <li>Coffee: $1.20 a pound</li> </ul><p>now making $5 a week, these things added up if you were the sole provider for a larger family lets say (and people had larger families back then) but it&#039;s all pretty cheap considering if you went to buy a pound of beef with a silver dollar for 9 cents, you get 91 cents change, if everyone did that the stores would have problems and not have change. $20 for a store even was a lot of money to have laying around. </p><p><br /></p><p>I mean at the time a 4 bedroom house could be rented for about $5 a month if board was offered it was usually about $2-3 more per person a month, 1 acre of lands was usually $3-$5 to buy, a family of 4, probably $14 a month for rent and food out of the $20 you made for the month, and this doesn&#039;t cover clothes or other needs/wants yet.</p><p><br /></p><p>A horse, depending on type and condition would cost a person anywhere from $10- $200 (high end for a high end riding or work horse, $150 just for something decent) so good horses were out of reach for many people too. </p><p><br /></p><p>Gold coins were out of reach for most people, cents, nickels, dimes, maybe quarters to half dollars were more common, and dollar coins and above were less common, except maybe as savings and maybe you save a dollar a month, and in a year an a half you trade up to a double eagle, something like that, and in a decade you had enough for a good horse, or bought a couple acres of land ect. and started working on a house/farm and then need the work horses.. </p><p><br /></p><p>either way though people didn&#039;t really use all that many gold coins at least not for very long, smaller silver and copper was more common for routine transactions. </p><p>maybe you used a $5 gold to pay your rent one week, $10 gold after 2 weeks to pay your families board, and get a silver dollar back or 4 quarters, maybe you take the $5 gold each week from pay to the bank and trade for more easily spendable silver, and people would not be walking around with more than a couple silver dollars tops unless going to make a big purchase, it was usually some small coins as the normal, maybe a half dollar. Only the really wealthy were slapping down double eagles and buying up stuff,&nbsp; even a general store might flip a couple dollars a day tops.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>A $1000 purchase in 1860 would be like going to buy 325 acres of land, or 5 top of the line horses, they aren&#039;t going to care if it&#039;s gold or silver you pay them with as long as they get their money but the average person would be hard pressed to come up with $1000 to even begin with. for convenience sake if someone managed to save $20 morgans or something like that, they&#039;d likely trade up to a gold double eagle because it&#039;s lighter than 20 silver dollars and easier to hide also.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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